Brooke-Popham, Henry Robert Moore (1878-1953)

Brooke-Popham ("Brookham" to friends) graduated
from Sandhurst in 1898, fought in the Boer War, and
became one of the first British
military aviators in
1911.
He saw no combat in the First World War,
serving instead as an air staffofficer.
He key figure in the creation of the Royal
Air
Force served in technical staff positions, as air defense
commander of Britain, and as air officer commanding in Iraq and
later
for the entire Middle East. He retired and became governor general
of
Kenya in 1937.

Called out of retirement when the European war
broke out, Brooke-Popham was appointed commander in chief in the
Far East
in October 1940. At the bottom of everyone's priority list, he
received
little in the way of modern equipment or well-trained troops and was
unable to prepare an adequate defense of Malaya
against the Japanese invasion
which
came in December 1941. Though elderly and prone to falling asleep
during meetings, he was hard and methodical in the field. He
got on poorly with Duff Cooper, who was sent to Singapore with Cabinet
status, which could not have helped Brooke-Popham's cause in
London.

Brooke-Popham badly underestimated the Japanese,
refusing to "believe they
would form an intelligent fighting force." Following a trip to Hong Kong in December 1940 he
reported that (Kotani 2009):

I had a good close-up, across the barbed wire, of
various sub-human specimens dressed in dirty grey uniform, which I
was
informed were Japanese soldiers.

Brooke-Popham allegedly told British
officers at Hong Kong that
the
Japanese were incapable of night flying.

Brooke-Popham sought repeatedly for permission to
implement MATADOR, a preemptive move into a potentially strong
defensive position in southern Thailand,
but was refused for political reasons. He was relieved on 27
December
1941 and thereafter played no significant role in the war,
retiring in
1945.